Straight Line

Posted on December 14, 2013

First mammogram. The machine’s clear plates squeeze in on my right breast. A sticker clings just above the nipple. Extreme’s “More Than Words” plays in the radiologist’s office. I laugh when I should be holding my breath. We have to start over. One, two, three, now don’t breathe, the technician says. She’s not laughing, anyway. And she didn’t laugh when I told her that the sticker she applied, at a glance, looked like a sound-effects splat in a comic book – kapow! The sticker marks the place where my doctor, one week prior, found something under her rolling fingertips.

Right there?

Right there.

I only noticed it myself when I hugged my five-year-old Chloe. A sore place. Like pushing at a bruise.